Agenda and minutes

To confirm and sign the minutes of the meeting held on 13 July 2022.

The minutes of the meeting held on 13 July 2022 were approved.

Members of the Committee are invited to declare any pecuniary or personal interests relating to specific matters on the agenda.

Please see note (a) at the end of the agenda.

No declarations of interest were received.

To consider the attached report and comment on the draft Road Safety Policy. This will be accompanied by a verbal presentation on some key statistics from the public consultation so far.

4.1       The Chair invited Philip Williams to present this item. Members received a written report in advance and the following points were noted:

·        Whilst road safety had often formed part of other Council policies (such as the Local Transport Plan), it had long been felt that it needed a more substantial review. The draft Policy had allowed the opportunity to review and refresh the Council’s approach to road safety.

·        The attached report set out the background to the Policy, the reasons why and importance of this review.

·        Officers provided a workshop back in 2021 to help shape some of the core themes, plus worked with experts for an independent review on proposed policies.

·        Members would be aware of the additional £600,000 that had been provided to support the Community Speed Watch scheme (jointly with the Office of Police and Crime Commissioner). The first phase of this scheme had ended on 31 August and had 109 different organisations bid for the funding, with a good spread across the county.

·        The newly established Gloucestershire Road Safety Partnership was allowing better cooperation and joined up working across those organisations who had a statutory responsibility for road safety.

·        The public consultation was due to close on Sunday evening (11^th September 2022). There had been really good engagement with the consultation, with over 450 completed survey responses received, which also allowed respondents to add comments to their answers to provide further detail.

·        Overall, there was significant support for the policy’s 10-year vision and 9 key themes, people understood why it was important to review at this stage.

·        The ambition for the county was Vision Zero by 2050 but it was important to also have an interim target which was to half fatalities and injuries by 2032, which itself was extremely challenging.

Questions

4.2       There was a lengthy discussion about the effectiveness of 20mph zones as a tool to improve road safety. The report referred to research and existing studies that 20mph zones which were reliant upon signage only had very low compliance levels, and that you were more likely to have a bigger impact with schemes that included physical traffic calming measures. A Department for Transport (DfT) study in 2014 also found that there was no real value for money on signage only schemes as there was no tangible evidence that they reduced casualties. 

4.3       Whilst some members agreed with this, other members were of the strong opinion that the low cost of implementing signage only 20mph zones meant that you could cover a much wider area and push to achieve an overall change of culture. Whilst accepting not all drivers would immediately drop down to 20mph, there was still a tendency to at least drive slower than 30mph. There was also a huge financial issue for communities being able to afford traffic calming measures compared to the signage only schemes.

4.4       Looking at the feedback from communities, it was noted that where 20 mph schemes were in place, communities who had not taken  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

To review the committee work plan and suggest items for consideration at future meetings.

Members noted the future items in the attached work plan and made the following additions:

·        Review of the Traffic Regulation Order process and delivery

·        Sheep mess in the Forest of Dean – information on whether GCC has any responsibility in addressing this issue such as through Trading Standards (animal welfare)

·        Future update on the Electric Vehicle Charging point rollout

To note the attached update report from Colin Chick, Executive Director of Economy, Environment & Infrastructure.

This report is to be taken as read. If members of the Committee have any questions, these should be emailed to Sophie Benfield in Democratic Services who will liaise with officers to provide a written response.

The report was taken as read and noted.